If you just look at their appearance -- the sleeveless denim jackets, the patches, the tattoos, the sunglasses, the long hair -- your first impulse might be to make sure your medical insurance is up to date. Or better yet, you may want to be someplace else.

These guys are bikers, serious ones, and many of their machines are Harleys.

It's one of the few professions where you're assured of being laid off after a spectacular job performance.

The place is the Nevada Ballet Theatre, 1651 Inner Circle Drive. The profession is that of ballet dancer, which is done on a contract-by-contract basis. Dancers might work only 31 weeks a year.

When Len Kreisler took on the job of medical director for the Nevada Test Site in 1973, he had no idea his first day on the job would be a memorable one.

Kreisler brought his family to Nevada from Peekskill, N.Y., where greenery dominates and rain is often in the forecast. That first day, he rode in an old Cadillac ambulance to the on-site housing units -- trailers set in the middle of nowhere.

UNLV dance students had the opportunity to create music for fellow students during a weeklong workshop with members of the New York City-based Erick Hawkins Dance Company.

One group of dance majors performed alongside the professionals while another group acted as musicians in a live performance, the culmination of the workshop.

An organization that seeks to help infants get a fresh start in life recently moved into a fresh new building.

Henderson resident Darla Hayden, now executive director of The Lullaby Connection, was volunteering at UMC when she first learned about newborn babies who leave the hospital with nothing.

Situated unobtrusively among East Lake Mead Boulevard's largely Hispanic eateries and retailers, the small stucco and timber-framed building might not even be noticed by a passing driver.

For its nearly 300 members, however, the German-American Social Club of Nevada has for years been a quiet haven of friendship and socializing and family oriented good times.

Madolyn Ropell spent a week cleaning her bedroom and bathroom, taking out the trash, vacuuming and even pulling weeds in the backyard of her Northwest Las Vegas home.

At the end of the week in February, the 9-year-old was given extra allowance for her hard work. She took all the money and donated it to a fund being raised at Kahre Elementary school for the local Officer Down program.

It is possible to teach an old dog new tricks. The tough part is training the owner, said Christine Hanley, local contractor with Bark Busters Home Dog Training.

Hanley goes to homes all over the Las Vegas and Henderson areas to help owners direct dogs' habits -- anything from housebreaking to barking to jumping up -- in their familiar home environments.

Considered a small bedroom community of Las Vegas, Sandy Valley typifies a quiet and rural town that lacks local industry.

About 50 miles southwest of the valley, near the California state line, Sandy Valley has roughly 2,400 residents. Getting to the rural town is a task in itself. Exit onto state Route 161 off Interstate 15 and turn onto Sandy Valley Road, a path with speed limits ranging from 35 to 45 miles that moves uphill, downhill, twists and turns around blind corners through the mountains. The journey on Sandy Valley Road lasts for roughly 10 miles at the slow pace while vehicles familiar with the curves of the asphalt easily handle the road going twice the speed limit.

Walking through the front door of rock 'n' roll legend Sandy Nelson's home on D Street is like stepping back in time.

It's a place that resembles a cluttered recording studio from the mid-1950s -- stacks of LP records, electronic equipment piled almost to the ceiling, the lingering scent of smoldering tobacco, newspaper clippings tacked to the wall, a framed gold Vinylmania 2001 record hanging among those yellowed, tattered clippings, and enough wiring to draw current from Hoover Dam -- and yet the presence of a synthesizer, electric piano and a well-used and nearly worn-out set of drums and cymbals tells you this is no ordinary place.